Did you know that a pitcher is responsible for 35.3 percent of an individual strikeout?

In any one baseball game, there are 50 players who are eligible to play. Which of them is the most important? On any single play, there can be up to 13 players who can directly impact the outcome (the nine fielders, the batter, and potentially, three runners). Which one of them will have the biggest effect on what happens? Even if we zoom in on the batter and pitcher (because the answer is probably going to be one of them), should we worry more about what the batter brings to the at bat or the pitcher?

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Last week, ESPN’s Buster Olney wrote a rather curious column in which he asked a very simple question. Why do Major Leaguers high five each other so much? The issue came to light after the Milwaukee Brewers had to ban high fives for a little bit after an outbreak of pink eye in the clubhouse. (Makes sense, since pink eye is very transmissible.)

Trying to find a reason to believe some managers get their players ready better.

It’s officially the dog days of spring training. The pitcher and catchers finally reported. They started playing games. The Will Ferrell thing happened. Everyone is wearing green today, even though that doesn’t make any sense for some teams whose name starts with “Red”. But a funny thing will happen in these next few weeks. Gone are the days when guys play every other day for four innings. Oh, they’re not up to every-single-day mode yet, but this is the part of spring training where you have to get up to full speed. Opening Day will be here before you know it!

As I write this, Major League Baseball hasn’t quite decided what to do about Josh Hamilton. Reports have suggested that Hamilton has met with league officials to discuss an incident during the offseason in which he used drugs, reportedly including cocaine and alcohol. Hamilton, who has had well-documented battles with substance use in his past, brought the incident to the attention of league officials himself. Now MLB is trying to figure out what the punishment should be for Mr. Hamilton.

What is a good manager worth? More to the point, how do we tell who the good ones are? We can measure what a manager does during the game, but that’s only a small part of his job description. A manager does decide who pinch-hits when, but he’s also in charge of making sure that everything is cool in the locker room. He manages the men as well as the game. We’re pretty sure that the answer isn’t zero, but what is it?

Fast forward five years or so. And 17 seconds. MLB has entered the brave new world of the pitch clock. Ryan Webb is standing on the mound, finishing out yet another 8-3 game in which he will not get a save, a fact which will be discussed at length on Effectively Wild #1595 (a Friday episode, naturally). Webb looks in for the sign, but he’s having trouble coming to an agreement with his catcher. Webb wants to go fastball here, but his catcher is thinking a changeup would do the trick. Webb relents and nods to the changeup and gets himself mentally ready to throw the pitch. He feels a little twinge in his upper arm. Nothing major. A tiny cramp. It’s August. He wiggles his arm and the twinge goes away. Then he starts to wonder, why is it that I never get to pitch in the save situations? Why anything? Why am I here in the middle of this field? “Save.” What a funny word when you say it over and over again.

Maybe stathead teams don't love their favorite strategy as much as you'd think.

Well, congrats go out to Rob Manfred on assuming the post of Commissioner of Major League Baseball. And congratulations go out to Rob Manfred on igniting his first Twitter controversy about three hours into his lifetime term. In an interview that he gave to ESPN’s Karl Ravech, Manfred spoke of his desire to introduce “the clock” into the game, but then continued on to this tasty nugget:

How come we never do transaction analyses for player development hires…

This is the worst time of the baseball calendar. There’s… nothing… going… on. Oh, there’s the odd free agent signing here and there, and I guess we’re getting into arbitration season where teams and arb-eligible players pretend that they are not going to just split the difference up until they get to the doorway of the hearing room. And there’s always the spring training truck. That will leave in a couple weeks. That’s nice.

Or: How historians will explain it if Pedro Martinez fails to get 5 percent of the vote and falls off the HOF ballot in his first year of eligibility...

It’s Hall of Fame time again. And since there’s not a lot to do this week—it's something of a mutual agreement that teams give their employees the last week of the year off, so that everyone can get some vacation—it’s pretty much the only thing to write about. But of course, Hall of Fame voting has been anything but boring in the past few years. Enshrining someone in the ranks of the immortals for the rest of time is sure to start a few arguments on what merits inclusion in that very select group, but now the process itself has come under scrutiny. Voters for the Hall of Fame are restricted to only 10 checkmarks on their ballots, but many of them have said that they believe that more than 10 currently eligible bachelors are worth swiping right on (or is it swiping left… I’ve been married almost 10 years and have no idea how Tinder works).